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I am usually very optimistic when we get new updates in Blox. But I have 3 issues with this format.

First, as pictured, the navigation buttons cover up content. Sure, I figured out how to remove the buttons, but my users won't be able to. The deprecated white navigation buttons in the red bar were the way to go. I'd like this to be a Per-Site choice to make.

Second, under the hamburger menu, there are no descriptions as to what each button does.

Third, because of the update, I have a random gray bar at the top that I now have to fix.

Forth, I do admire the fact that swiping pages left to right now takes a split second. Finally, the swiping has been improved.

We're trying to make our calendar utilization more robust, in part by making calendar categories more easily navigable and by hiding some of the breadth of the calendar categories from users by curating the presentation of certain categories.

To that end, I'd like to use an autonav block to direct users to specific calendar pages, though not necessarily all the subcategories of /calendar/, and possibly even to pages outside the /calendar/ directory.

So, to wit: One of the requested features was a page where users can see text listings of a large number of upcoming events — say for the next month. If I create an associated URL (/upcoming_events/) in the /calendar/ directory, it will show up in the autonav block configured to call /calendar/, but it will also show up in the user submission form for calendar events on the dashboard. I don't want users to be able to submit an event as an upcoming event, but I do want them to be able to utilize the autonav to navigate to /upcoming_events/. If I create /upcoming_events/ outside the /calendar/ directory, it will not appear in the dashboard submission form, but it will also not appear in the autonav.

Similarly, we would like users to be able to make submissions under certain categories that are not necessarily presented to all users in the autonav. This is because we have a number of calendar categories which are not extensively populated (dance, car shows) but could be presented together in a broader category (say, entertainment). If /dance/ and /car_shows/ exist under /calendar/, they'll appear in the dashboard submission form, but also in the autonav. We do not want this because we'd rather direct users to fewer, more populated pages instead of many sparsely populated pages. I can use a card block to pull in /dance/ and /car_shows/ submissions to an /entertainment/ page, but the /entertainment/ page will not show up in the autonav unless it is also under /calendar/ — and thus it will show up in the dashboard submission form, which we do not want because "Entertainment" is a broad enough designation that it becomes meaningless unless curated on the front end.

If I've got it right, this is because the autonav and the dashboard submission form both call /calendar/. After racking my brain, the most efficient solution I can think of for this is a block that looks and functions (for the user) like the autonav, but which can be configured in the CMS to display only selected directories. Is there a block that does this? Is it possible? Am I missing an obvious answer?

We've got a story on our the site. Let's say the New Orleans Saints are making roster cuts on deadline day. Our guys are updating their story w/ new player names every couple of minutes. The story tells readers to 'check back frequently' or 'reload the page' for the latest info. How can we best display this info in BLOX so that people who visit a page frequently during a breaking story actually see the most up-to-date info?

As the doc says, there are a few limitations, but in general you'll get updates about every minute or so.

However! Note that this does not affect the users' local browser cache. That is still subject to a 5-minute cache. (You could, if you could find the right words, tell users to force reload the page. It is different in different browsers though, so I'm not sure if there could be an elegant way to say this.)

So this doesn't really work for "live blogging" - but it should address the needs of corrections and story updates and breaking news that you want to push to the front page.

We did have a discussion internally today about some enhancements we can make to bring us closer to having some kind of live blogging environment... I will look into that as a possible future feature.

EDIT: Looks like I might be able to just embed the code though... (and I admit I posted before even trying but figured if somebody already has a system like this that is TownNews friendly it will save me some time).

Would like to learn more about why there's a 5-10 minute delay in newsletters from the moment you click 'send' to the moment they're delivered to subscribers' inboxes. In breaking news situations, that delay puts us well behind our competition. Anything we can do differently?

If you're like me you get dozens of tech support calls every week. People needing help logging in, subscribing, navigating the website, etc. For a while now I've wanted the ability to add notes to a user's profile.

There are tons of times people call and say they spoke with me last month, last year, yesterday about X, Y and Z and I have no memory of the conversation because of the sheer number of calls I get. So it would be nice to have a place to jot some quick notes, hidden to the user of course. Maybe a date field and a field for text.

It would also help the user's experience that we actually do remember the conversation.

Would anyone else use a feature like this? Is there a BLOX workaround way to do this that doesn't involve a spreadsheet or text document?

We have some users who have signed up for BLOX with their personal email address, but have since gone on to be staff (from volunteers) so they then get their own site-branded email.

We are unable to change their email address since the system spits out that they need a static address for login purposes. We could make an entirely new user account, but there's too many articles to change over.

It would be great to be able to add/change the profile "display" email address to be different than the login one, so emails can go to a work address rather than a personal one.

New features and exciting improvements make it even easier for your site to be a one-stop source for business info in your community. At our November customer webinar, Phil Pracht, product manager for BLOX Business Directory, will show you how to:

Easily create enhanced business profiles with the simplified Storefront setup in BLOX CMS.

Leverage your business directory to power Local Niche Guides for new advertising possibilities.

Save time and money with new automated enhancements for simplified directory updates.

Take advantage of TownNews.com’s new partnership with Guarantee Digital for complete fulfillment packages.

1) Wikipedia-style revisions would allow users to see the actual changes made between two versions of the same asset. Text would be highlighted that was deleted, added or changed, with an area for specific notes (if needed) for why the changes happened. User information could be seen when hovering over the changes to see who actually did the edit.

2) It's difficult to see currently what the actual changes or revisions have been made to an asset.

3) This feature would be used all the time by every staff member. Allows us to keep track of every change and why the change was made. Would especially be useful on long-form articles where what was changed or changes that need to be highlighted were missed.

4) All users would benefit from this feature. Our head editors and copyrighters would benefit most from it.

You can clearly see the previous asset text on the left, and the right is the current (or latest selected) with the changes that were made to the asset. It could be even further clarified by highlighting with different colours.

Red = delete

Green = added

Orange = changes (ie: spelling)

Currently, if a staff member who did the edits is not around, we have to open up several of the previous revisons and compare them. By having the changes in one window and side-by-side, it's easier to see past changes and plan for future ones.

I assume that when she hits the paywall, she can log in and see content. But, each time she comes back, she has to log in again?

If so:

- It is unlikely to be a "remember me" issue since your site has "force enabled for all user" for the "remember me" setting.

- It is very likely she is in private browsing mode. In this situation the browser doesn't store cookies so it will not remember you between settings. (We see this complaint especially from iPhone users.)

In some of our sites, the bylines and taglines for authors differ between the print version and the web version. For example, the print byline in TCMS might by "BY JON DOE / Community News" but the desired byline for the web could be "By Jon Doe of the Community News staff."

Taglines are frequently even more different. A print tagline might be "Contact Jon Doe at jdoe@communitynews.com" while the web tagline might be "Jon Doe may be reached at jdoe@communitynews.com or 800-293-9576. Follow him @jondoe."

Those are simplistic examples. Some of our actual cases are even more different. Our desire would be to have the author field -- which would be the same in both TCMS and BLOX be the key for allowing these to automatically be different in the two channels, even though TCMS would carry the print version over to BLOX.

The idea would be that when an asset arrived in BLOX, the author field (if populated) would automatically place information from the "content" portion of the BLOX user profile into the byline and tagline fields, replacing what came over from TCMS.

This would occur on every bylined, staff-written story in our largest newspaper every day. The time saved would be measured in man hours every day. There's no reason that this work should have to be done manually.